Yes, the SEC has won five of the last seven National Championships but my title of this blog is talking about this year and I truly hope people realize in a hurry just how overrated the SEC is this season. Sure the SEC produces the fastest defenses in the country and the most draft picks of any conference but take a long look at the conference before anointing them the best conference in US College Football.

There has been a shift in the SEC this season, when you look at the conference from top to bottom it’s not nearly as strong as other years. Most conferences go through this but for years the SEC has always been loaded with strong teams and never seems to have a down year, or at least that is what we are told by the folks at ESPN. If you look deeper at the SEC this year, you will see that the conference isn’t nearly as strong as its been this past decade.

Sure the SEC can boast of having 6 teams ranked in the AP Top 25 but we all know that pre-season rankings mean nothing. For two straight weeks the #15 ranked team has lost to a non-ranked team and lets not forget just last week #13 ranked Virginia Tech lost to a Non-BCS school in James Madiso, right in Blacksburg to boot.

Outside of Alabama there is no other elite teams in the SEC unlike past seasons when LSU or Florida are constantly ranked in the top 5. Arkansas might be the second best team in the SEC although the polls don’t reflect due to Florida getting a higher pre-season ranking due to their past success. Florida and South Carolina are strong teams but not elite teams while Georgia, LSU, Kentucky and Auburn will have their troubles this season but none of them really look solid. Florida might end of being very good by the end of the season but South Carolina is currently the best team in the SEC East.

Ole Miss has already lost at home to a non-BCS school but should still go bowling come December. But Tennessee, Vanderbilt and Mississippi St. are average teams at best.

I for one am quite tired of hearing about how if an SEC team loses a game we are all told by the so-called experts that if TCU, Utah or Boise St. played in our conference they would have more than three losses. Well not this season because the Horned Frogs, Utes and Broncos would give LSU, Auburn, Georgia, South Carolina, Arkansas and even Florida all they could handle on a weekly basis.

It’s the middle and bottom tier teams who ALWAYS get severly overrated
every year because of pre-season rankings, poor out of conference schedules, losing
to each other but being told it’s a quality loss and conference perception………when the reality is, the middle of the SEC is as good or bad as almost every other BCS conference. The winner of the BCS Title shouldn’t make teams like Arkansas or Auburn better but that is what we are told.

The SEC gets a lot of pre-season love in the polls, the conference gets the benefit of the doubt on all parts of the BCS formula. An SEC team will have played several top 25 teams due to the pre-season poll and that helps them in the BCS poll. Most SEC teams play a weak non-conference schedule and will be 4-0 heading into conference play. SEC teams don’t usually drop in the polls for bad performances. The reason for this once again is they get the benefit of the mythical superiority of all teams in the conference.

Nothing would make me happier than to see TCU or Boise St. in the BCS Title game this year because nobody in the SEC will schedule either of these teams after they have been asked by both schools over and over.

Right now the SEC is all about Alabama and then everyone else. There is no team in the SEC that is close to the Crimson Tide. AS THEY SAY, they play the games on the field for a reason and pre-season polls need to be squashed once and for all!!

Kevin

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Written by Kevin Lee
Kevin has had an extensive career as a sports writer and radio show host for almost 10 years. Kevin has covered the NFL, NHL, MLB, NCAA College Football and Basketball. From covering the BCS Championship Game to the Final Four and the Stanley Cup Finals, he has done it all. He has been featured on numerous sports radio stations in Canada and the United States and often a weekly guest on numerous XM and Sirius Satellite radio shows. He has also had his work featured on FoxSports.com.

8 Comments

In response to “The SEC is overrated this season, book it and don’t be fooled!”

Couldn’t disagree with you more on that entire rant. The SEC remains, top to bottom, the premier conference in the nation. Sure Alabama is the only “Elite” team right now, but as u said 6 teams are ranked in the top 25 and thats no small feat. No other conference comes even close to that. I agree that the SEC team might get too much love in preseason rankings but thats because of the reputation they have EARNED and what is a poll if nothing else than a reputation contests?. Also u say the SEC is in a down year and doesnt deserve the pre season hype, I ask you what other conference comes close to challenging it for supremacy??? The ACC is a joke as of last week, the PAC is mired in mediocrity, Oregon barely registers as an “elite” team, the rest (OSU, STAN) are barely ranked (USC is offially dead for 2 years and shouldnt be talked about), Iowa will take care of arizona saturday to knock them out of the top 25. The big 12 is OU, Neb and TEx and the rest are rather pedestrian. Big Easy is and always was a joke. So the only other conference coming close is the Big Ten. I consider OSU and Iowa to be top 10 teams and Wisconsin a top 15…PSU should be ranked and maybe michigan and then it gets sketchy…The SEC puts more players in the NFL than any other conference BY FAR and it reels in the best recruiting classes year in and year out, AND has hands down the best collection of head coaches of any conference (Nat Champs in ( ): Meyer(2), Saban (2), Miles(1), Spurrier (1), Nutt, Petrino, Richt, Chizik, Mullen). The fan base is the most loyal than any conference (save maybe the Big Ten) and road games are truly difficult in all venues.

Where you really lose me is when u say “the middle of the SEC is as good or bad as almost every other BCS conference”…so by that reasoning Auburn (which im guessing u would rank 6th in the SEC after BAMA, Ark, SC, Fla, LSU) is as good as B.C. , Cal, Ok St, and Rutgers ??? That doesnt seem accurate to me. We are talking about an Auburn team that was 1 play away from beating Bama last year and is has improved on both sides of the ball this year. And it only gets worse when u look at teams 7-8 and 9.

I’m not sure if your attack on the SEC is sincere or a misguided attempt to drum support for the BSU/TCU of the world, which will ALWAYS remain on the outside looking in because YES it is obvious to anyone that watches college football that playing 10 Wyomings in a season and going undefeated is no where near the accomplishment of playing a 1 loss season in the SEC. I dont doubt BSU and TCU can more than hold their own vs UF, LSU, etc IN ONE GAME, but have them play SC-UGA-LSU-FlA-Miss st- then Auburn and see how they fare…they have neither the depth nor the quality to contend in the SEC.

I fail to see how a big ten and a Big 12 team losing makes the SEC poorer by comparison…. you guys logic must work at a higher level than mine I guess…Pac 10 definately helped itself by beating Texas and iowa.

Further proof that a national, more balanced system overhaul is needed (http://prosportsblogging.com/college-football/bcs-meets-college-football-playoffs/) – preferrably one that actually works. Mark Cuban has a plan in the works to take all the conference champs and use the existing BCS number crunchers to define a method of truly ranking all teams. Then we need to organize into a 16-team tournament (with byes for best 4 teams) and have an actual playoff!